The M12: A New Vision For The High Plains

Last week we discussed Richard Saxton, a Colorado-based artist whose work considers the intersections of artistic and community practice across a number of mediums: design, architecture, photography and sculpture. Today we’d like to continue to investigate the idea of “the vernacular” in modern art by focusing on the M12, a collective of artists who emerged from The Municipal Workshop group Mr. Saxton helped to organize.
The mission of M12 is to plan and execute new projects in the realm of contemporary public art, to facilitate creative research regarding public art making, and to promote and facilitate public art as a vehicle for exploring community identity, contemporary issues, and the creative process. We seek to engage communities and individuals in the exploration of art through exhibitions, residency programs, educational programming, and collaborative visual arts projects. M12 has a particular interest in the rural landscape and the agrarian tradition, and often develops projects that engage, celebrate, and explore the value of these often under-represented communities.
The Campito is another exciting project that goes onto a terrain that many contemporary artists only consider from a distance. Here, the group has redesigned the traditional sheep wagon of the West, and–still within an condensed space–offered a portable living quarters that contains solar panels, a composting toilet and a portable garden (among many other features). The M12 sees in this commonplace structure an opportunity to assess a region’s connections both to their place and their history:
The project as a whole looks to stimulate community dialogue about the campito and larger subjects inherently tied to its present day reality; heritage of the American West, contemporary agriculture and food production, globalization, immigration, workers rights, and federal policies and practices. The project fuses contemporary, historical and geographical knowledge with the intention of putting it to use on the future Western American landscape.
This fusion of “contemporary, historical and geographical knowledge” can be viewed in much greater detail on the M12’s website, which is also featuring their Prairie Module–a gorgeous geometric public art structure that is powered by solar panels. Currently installed in Indianapolis, the M12 tells us these Module is “the first public art installation to return solar power to the electrical grid.”